Entropy
by CrazyCousinEiko
Summary: It's been one month after the Fall, and Lestrade is barely holding himself together. Struggling with his smeared reputation and his own doubts, it's becoming clear that he can't deal with this on his own. No slash. K because I can't remember if there's any swearing.
1. Forty Three Thousand, Eight Hundred

This fic is a collab between LastSaskatchewanSpacePirate and me. The odd numbered chapters are hers, and the even numbered ones are mine. Please read and review, and give her some love for these! :)

Unfortunately, we do not own these characters. Those rights go to Sir ACD and BBC.

Note: There are 43, 800 minutes in a month.

* * *

Donovan's been quiet ever since it happened. Is that guilt? Lestrade doesn't know, and Lestrade doesn't care.

Sherlock Holmes has been dead for one month.

What Donovan _should_be doing is bragging and gloating. But she's not. They avoid each other and it becomes routine, so that when he sees her down the end of the corridor talking to Anderson it's the first time he's seen her in weeks. He plans to walk straight past, but as he comes near enough to hear their conversation he stops dead.

They're talking about Sherlock.

"I always knew he was a freak." Anderson is saying, and that's all Lestrade hears of the conversation but that's enough because he drops what he's holding and storms toward the pair of them, hands out, blood boiling, intending with all his heart to rip Anderson's throat out with bare hands and fingernails -

That's when Dimmock sees him headed toward Anderson with murder in his heart and seizes him round the middle. "No-!"

Anderson and Donovan turn to stare as Lestrade spins round and punches Dimmock full in the face. The younger DI stumbles back a bit, surprised, his nose streaming blood. What Lestrade should be doing is running. Right now. Out of the hallway, out of the building. But instead he throws himself at Dimmock and hits him again, and then again, with all his force, feeling Dimmock's nose break under his fist, once, twice, three, four times until his knuckles are sore and his whole hand is wet with blood. The blood is streaked up his arm, and on his shirt, and his face and it feels good. Dimmock scrambles out from under his fist, backing away, blood gushing down his face. The whole front of his shirt is wet. He spits a mouthful of blood onto the floor.

Donovan and Anderson are dead silent.

What Dimmock should be doing is fighting him. The Iain Dimmock he knew would have broken his nose right back. He would have been swearing a blue streak and beating Lestrade bloody. Lestrade waits for it. Wants it. But Dimmock just looks at him.

He wonders what happened to the Dimmock he knew.

He wonders what happened to the Lestrade he knew.

Donovan should be swearing too. Yelling at him, making all kinds of threats, telling him he was stupid and an idiot and _get out of the damn building and don't get back until you can control yourself_. Except that she doesn't. Not at all. It seems what people _should_be doing doesn't matter much anymore.

Lestrade _should_have been keeping Sherlock safe.

He figures he can at least count on Anderson. Anderson will overreact in some way. He'll scream or swear or go running off to tattle to a superior or at least launch into a monologue about how batshit crazy Lestrade is and how stupid they all are, they were, to count on Sherlock for anything, and how Lestrade should have seen this coming. Lestrade waits for that. It's nice to have something solid in all this, even if it's Anderson.

Except that Anderson doesn't say anything.

No one says anything.

The silence is so thick you can almost hear Dimmock's blood dripping on the carpeting.

So Lestrade does what he should have done in the first place.

He runs.


	2. Aftermath

This one is written by me. :) I hope you enjoy! :D

* * *

It takes several moments for him to realize that there's blood on the floor. Where did it come from? Is it Lestrade's? Oh god, he hopes not. He blinks. There's something wet on his lips. Dimmock looks down to see the front of his shirt soaked in blood.

Oh... the blood is his own.

He feels like an unobservant idiot for not seeing it sooner- he tries not to think about the fact that Sherlock would say that was exactly the case had he been there. Had he been alive.

Thankfully Sally- _Donovan_ is there to help take him away from those thoughts. She kneels beside him on the floor and has him tip his head forward so that the blood doesn't run down his throat. Anderson's there, too, helping him to his feet.

"Let's get you to the hospital," Donovan says, her voice more even and calm than it ought to be after what just happened.

"No one tells a soul about this."

The words leave Dimmock's mouth before he even realizes he's speaking. He covers his shock and drills both of them with a stare.

"You've got it?"

They pause and look at each other worriedly. Really, they ought to tell someone that Lestrade has just snapped and beat up one of his best mates (admittedly, Dimmock did just hold the man back from beating the hell out of Anderson for talking trash about Sherlock even after everything, but it's no excuse), but they've already caused enough damage telling on people. They are not about to do so again willingly, especially since everyone's favourite D.I. is already so close to losing his job.

As if he needed to lose yet another thing so precious to him.

So they say nothing. Anderson stays behind to clean up the mess, and Donovan walks downstairs with Dimmock and makes sure no one sees. As much as he holds a grudge against her, he can't find it within himself to hate her (or even dislike her), and thus his next words are spoken without the animosity they might have had otherwise.

"Seriously, Sally. There's no need to come with me. I haven't had a concussion or anything. I'm fine- I've handled worse."

She wants to argue with him, to reason- or maybe she wants to redeem herself in Dimmock's eyes because she knows that she has no chance right now to do so in Lestrade's. But she doesn't. She simply nods and gazes at him apologetically.

"I'll tell them you've had a headache and gone home."

There aren't many people who know about his chronic migraines, but right now Dimmock is thankful that Donovan does. He hasn't had one in almost a month, so his superiors won't be very surprised to hear that he has one now.

Dimmock gives a curt nod and gets into the cab that has just pulled up to the curb. Donovan watches as it drives away and wishes yet again that things had turned out differently. She doesn't regret her actions- she'd do it all over again if necessary- but wishes the consequences hadn't been so... _destructive._

-

Later that night, after he's all bandaged and drugged and generally taken care of, Dimmock walks over to the bar where he and Lestrade like to have a pint together. It's not the same one as the Yard likes to have their drinks, which is good because that means no one will find either one of them there.

Dimmock walks into the place and gives a nod to Larry, the bartender, and Julia, who plays music there most nights nowadays. They both look at him in concern but neither pry. They can tell just by looking at him that Dimmock won't say a word. He smiles at them gratefully.

He finds the older man sitting at the bar hidden in shadow. The brunette approaches him slowly and makes enough noise to ensure that he doesn't end up taking Lestrade by surprise. He doesn't want to have to got back to the hospital after all that. Dimmock slides in next to him wordlessly and taps the counter for a drink.

Larry knows what he likes and gives it to him with a worried glance toward the pensive silver-haired man. Dimmock gives him a reassuring look, though he doesn't feel all that assured. After the bartender leaves, the two detective inspectors sit in silence for a long while.

"It's not your fault, Greg."

It's a lie, a stupid thing to say, yet he is convinced that is the _right_ thing to say. Because if there is one man who doesn't deserve the blame, it's Lestrade, the man who has done everything anyone would expect of him and ten times more, the man who has given up so much and gotten so little in return, the man who is simultaneously adored, scorned, and ignored.

The man Dimmock owes so much to.

"It's not your fault," he repeats. "Blame anyone you like- Anderson, me, Moriarty, _whoever._ Just don't blame yourself. Please."

Lestrade is like another father to him, and Dimmock can't bear to see him like this. He just can't, even if it means laying this all out like a sissy. He wants to take a swig of ale and pretend none of this ever happened, but it has, and it needs resolution, so he sighs and waits for the man's reaction.

He just hopes he hasn't done anything too incredibly stupid.


	3. Even the King

Another gorgeous chapter by the ever-talented LastSaskatchewanSpacePirate

* * *

Greg likes to run.

It is not so much that he _likes_it as that he needs to. Needs to run. It clears his head. It distracts from his pain. He runs when he's sad, runs and runs and runs until his whole body hurts so much that he can't feel the pain in his heart any longer. He's a sprinter. He runs as fast as he possibly can for as long as he possibly can until his lungs - thank you, 30 years of nicotine - are screaming in protest and he feels like throwing up and his legs cannot hold him anymore. He runs as though something is chasing him.

He runs a lot, after Sherlock dies.

That morning he had gone running, and he'd run past Bart's, past the pavement where he can still see Sherlock's blood sometimes, and he had run and run for a very long time until he had collapsed to his knees and thrown up in the gutter.

And then he had stood up and jogged home and he had taken a shower and gone to work and punched Iain Dimmock - who was probably the only friend he had left - in the face a few dozen times and then he had run again.

He had run down the stairs and out the door and he had tripped on the curb and burst into hysterical tears by the side of the road in front of New Scotland Yard. And then he had stood up and jogged home. He had gone for the fridge - for the beer, because Lestrade's life now is running and crying and alcohol, and when he'd found none he'd smashed a lamp and then cried (again) and then run (again) and now he was here in the bar where he liked to watch karaoke with the man he had just punched in the nose and he is starting to wonder why he bothers to run at all anymore.

There is nowhere to run to.

Sherlock Holmes has been dead for one month.

At the beginning of the month it had been a great story - Sherlock Holmes: the fraud, the martyr, the devil, the mastermind, the victim, the killer, the hero. Headlines trumpeted his name, tabloids tore him to pieces, he was London's fallen angel, their unexpected nightmare. SHERLOCK HOLMES: HERO OR FRAUD? He was more famous in death than ever he had been in life. And then it had just stopped. The press is fickle: they moved on. The public moved on. Lestrade has never been good at moving on.

He has lost count of drinks by the time Iain shows up. Keeping count is a joke. He cannot remember the last time he bothered to keep track of how much he was drinking, but he imagines it must have been about a month ago.

The sleeves of Greg's shirt are dark with dried blood because he had not bothered to change it. He wears a light red jacket, and it is thin and light and sporty and it feels wrong. He should wear black. He does not own a black jacket. Maybe he should buy one. He wears the red jacket because it is a memory of a time where Sherlock was younger and Greg was stronger and the pavement outside Bart's had never been stained with blood and where there was more to life than running and drinking and crying and when Greg had thought (stupidly) that his world was so dark and so cold and so sad. Whatever he had felt before - whatever imagined hardship he had dreamed of - that was nothing.

Compared to this.

Iain is wary around him, and Greg is not surprised, but he is a bit surprised and a bit annoyed that Iain is here at all. "It's not your fault." says the younger man, which is a lie. Lestrade is sick and tired of being lied to, but he says nothing, because he is sick and tired of saying things. There had been a time when Lestrade had always known what to say. To an annoying superior on the phone, a crying widow at a crime scene, a heartbroken friend, a lost child.

That all ended when Sherlock's head cracked open on the pavement outside Bart's. Lestrade does not know what to say anymore.

They had passed him the mike at the funeral, and he had said nothing.

He has no words left.

Perhaps that is why he likes the drinking so much. There is no need to speak. He stopped knowing what to say exactly one month ago, and he raises his glass and drinks to that, to the anniversary of the day he lost everything.

It was his own damn fault, wasn't it?

For making Sherlock his everything.

"It's not your fault," Iain repeats, as though he can read Greg's thoughts. "Blame anyone you like- Anderson, me, Moriarty, whoever. Just don't blame yourself. Please."

Lestrade wraps both hands around his pint of beer and stares straight ahead, silent. He sees Iain raise his glass and drink in the corner of his peripheral vision.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: HERO OR FRAUD?

_Hero_, thinks Greg stubbornly. _Hero. He was a hero._

_He was my hero._

There is evidence, of course, to suggest otherwise, there is every evidence and more and more is discovered each day. The world is convinced. Lestrade is a man of science, of evidence, and yet he does not believe. Or does he not want to? Can he believe? Can he think that that boy with long dark curls and quicksilver eyes was a fraud, a fake, a lie -

No, because he wasn't -

He's not -

He's a hero -

He can't be -

Please -

The doubt is like physical pain. _How dare you?_ He screams at himself. _How dare you doubt him? How dare you -_

_How dare he do this to you?_ Screams the other part of him. _How dare he do this, how dare he lie?_

But he didn't lie, not Sherlock -

It's been like this for awhile - the conflict, the doubt. Like drowning inside. He doesn't know what to think anymore. He knows that he hates Sherlock, for putting him through this, and that he hates himself for hating Sherlock and that he will never ever stop loving Sherlock and he hates himself for that too. Nothing's real anymore, there's nothing to walk on, nowhere to run to, nothing to hold. He's losing his grip.

Maybe running's not the right word.  
Maybe he's falling.

"No." he says aloud, still staring hard across the bar. Iain turns toward him. "Sorry?"

"No." he says. "You're wrong. It is my fault."

"Greg-" says Iain gently.

"No." says Greg.

There is silence again.

Greg raises his hand for another drink. The sky outside is dark, the bar mostly empty. "How much have you had?" asks Iain.

Greg does not reply because he does not know the answer, and Iain does not press because he knows the answer is _too many_.

"I'm drinking for every lie he ever told me." says Greg finally, without making eye contact. Iain does not know what to say to that, and says nothing. Lestrade says nothing, and there is silence again and this is just the way he likes it.

"Greg..." says Iain, annoyingly breaking the precious silence. "Listen-"

"No." says Greg.

Iain goes quiet as effectively as if Greg had punched him again. He would have preferred that, but he knows it will not happen. Greg is not an angry drunk. Greg is loud for the first two or three beers and then he gets quiet. Very quiet. And sad.

"Listen." says Iain again, because he does not know what else to say, and this time Greg does not interrupt, so he presses on. "Forget him. Forget Sherlock." (This is not only harsh, but impossible, he knows, and he waits for another punch in the nose but it does not come.) "We need you." he says. "I need you. You can't just be like this. You need to - your job - you have to - " His careful speech crumbles and fades, and still Lestrade does not look at him, eyes still fixed on some point far away that Iain cannot see. The younger DI swallows back tears. "Greg...please..."

"You know." says Greg, who still does not look at the other man. "The last time I ever saw him, I was trying to arrest him."

His expression is blank, neutral. It is Iain who feels his face crumple into tears. "Greg-"

"I never even said goodbye." says Greg in a dull blank voice, as though reading from a text. He lifts his glass to his lips and drinks. Iain looks away. "Please.. just..." His throat closes and he has to blink a couple times to keep the tears back. He has never hated anyone more than he hates Sherlock Holmes in that moment, and the hate comes in a sudden rush like a wave and it crashes over him and then it is gone and he's left feeling drained.

"I don't know." confesses Greg. "I don't know anymore." His voice is tight and pained and broken. He turns to look at Iain for the first time, and the younger DI is struck by how empty his eyes are.

Greg looks back at his drink for a few moments. Then he takes out his wallet and thumbs through it, tossing some money on the counter. He turns back to look at Iain.

"I'm sorry I hit you." he says.

He thinks of going for a run, but in the end he walks.

He walks across the bar and opens the door and walks out the door and down the sidewalk. There is a clock chiming midnight somewhere.

Sherlock Holmes has been dead for one month and one day.


	4. Running

Dimmock is not a runner. He likes to walk. He likes to take things slowly and enjoy them. Running gets his heart pumping, which reminds him that he has a heart that can be broken.

He doesn't like that.

But when Lestrade, his closest friend, leaves him at a bar at midnight and walks off as if he has nothing left in the world, Dimmock runs after him, feeling his own heart start to crumble as the blood pushes the pieces from their haphazard walls. A dizzy spell nearly sends him splatting on the street, and he has to remind himself that he's still a little disoriented from the hospital drugs for his broken nose.

Why had he said those things, those _horrible, nasty_ things? _Forget Sherlock!?_ That was the cruelest thing he could have said! Yes, he is angry at Sherlock, but Dimmock knows the consulting detective wasn't a liar. He simply made a terrible, tragic decision that was threatening to destroy the man Iain Dimmock calls best friend and hero.

Dimmock decides that he must be very drugged up indeed if he's taking this long to catch up with the other D.I., who is both inebriated _and_ walking. Then Iain trips and actually falls this time, though he is careful to avoid face-planting on the unforgiving asphalt.

Lestrade stops at the sound of his comrade's grunt, but he doesn't turn around. He doesn't want to see another son of his prostrated on the ground like a fallen angel, blood pouring from wounds-

He screws his eyes shut and tries to shove the image away, though it doesn't work. Not at first, anyway. Then he turns around and sees Dimmock a few steps away from him. The brunette is on his hands and knees, looking up at Lestrade like a penitent sinner. His eyes are round and wide and childlike in the dim light of the street lamp.

This Lestrade cannot take.


	5. Falling

More lovely writing by LastSaskatchewanSpacePirate ^-^

Also, sorry for mass uploading, but I knew I'd forget if I didn't do them all at once... There should be only one or two chapters left. I'll try to put mine up quickly now that midterms are done. :)

* * *

"Greg-"

Iain tries to stand and stumbles. He falls. In another life, Greg would have lunged to catch him before he hit ground, would have closed the gap between them and held the younger man up until he regained his balance. But Greg does not move from where he stands, and Iain goes down and catches himself on a lightpost and finally manages to haul himself back to his feet, and in all this time Greg has not made a move to help him. Once that was his job. Once he had made that a silent vow to himself, to catch Iain Dimmock when he fell. Not tonight. He hadn't caught Sherlock either.

He dreams of that, sometimes, running to catch Sherlock as he does a perfect swan dive off the roof of the hospital and never does he run fast enough in those dreams to actually catch him. Other times it's Greg who spreads his arms out on the top of the building and lets himself fall, and always he wakes before he hits ground.

Someone told him when he was a kid that if you hit the ground in a falling dream you die in your sleep. Some nights he goes to bed in childish prayer that this is true and tonight will be the night he hits the pavement.

Iain straightens up, holding the lightpost for support. It is dark, and there is a yellow circle of light under the streetlamp where Iain stands. Greg is outside the light, in the dark. There is a streelamp some distance behind him, and another yellow circle of light. Greg could back up into it, but he does not. They look at each other for a time, separated by five feet of dark pavement: broken men in a broken world. Greg looks at Iain Dimmock for a long time and he thinks _we used to watch karaoke together and watch football and go out for drinks and eat those cherry donuts that no one else ever liked_and all these things seem strange now, someone else's friendship. A world without Sherlock is a world where cherry donuts and pub nights do not belong even though those are Iain things and not Sherlock things and nothing really makes sense anymore. It's all so delicate, complicated. Greg is starting to feel as though he is tightrope walking an abyss and he's starting to wish he would fall in.

Some days it feels like he has fallen: now, for instance, except that he's falling so slowly, like he's underwater. Tonight is more of the same, this slow falling, and he almost wants to laugh at how pathetic they look, he and Iain. Dishevelled and broken and bruised and tearful. Falling, falling. Falling apart.

Once upon a time there was a Greg who would have stopped himself falling, who would have picked himself back up and kept his chin high _for Iain_ and been strong _for Iain_but Greg is sick sick sick of being strong. For anyone.

"I'm sorry." says Iain, his voice raw. "I'm sorry I told you to forget him, I know you can't - you shouldn't - I just - I don't know -"

"No." says Greg, barely audible. Iain stops talking. "No." says Greg again, and he is surprised at the calm in his voice. "I should forget him. Because he lied."

"Greg-"

Iain takes a little step forward so that he is half out of the circle of light, and Greg takes the same step back, further into darkness. "He lied!" screams Greg. "He lied to me! I don't even - god, I don't even know who he was? Do you know that? I don't even know if Sherlock Holmes was his name. He was just - a lie, and a fraud - and - "

His breath catches and he takes another step backward. No. No, no, he can't say this, he can't. He can't dare. Sherlock - his Sherlock - was not a fraud, not a fake, not a lie -

_But he wasn't your Sherlock was he? He was just pretending_

No. It wasn't a lie, not all of that. Rooftops and underpass tunnels and cigarettes and blue eyes? No, not a lie. Never a lie. Sherlock - his Sherlock -

his son -

Iain had made a move toward him but now he has stopped dead in his tracks and Lestrade does not understand why until he feels how very wet his face is. He cranes his neck up to the sky, but there's no rain.

Falling, falling, falling.

His mouth tastes like salt and tears. His outburst is bitter on his tongue. He pulls his jacket tighter to him, the red one that speaks of Sherlock and donuts with cherry filling and he lets a sob escape him. No more being strong.

There was a time when he never would have cried in front of Iain Dimmock, but that time is not now. That was a time when they did things like pub nights and karaoke and ate cherry donuts and that was a time before Sherlock's head cracked open on the pavement outside Bart's.

The red jacket looks like blood now. He'll never wear it again.

He lets another sob out, and then another, and he's gasping in the cool night air, choking on his own tears and he doubles over crying and breaking and falling apart. Iain says something that he does not hear, and Greg mirrors the younger DI and grabs the lightpole behind him to keep from falling over. He's drunk and broken and shaking all over with the force of his sobbing and it's almost funny. This is all that's left of him. He's a man who cries against lightpoles and punches good men in the face.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: HERO OR FRAUD?

He's a man of evidence, and evidence says fraud. But he's also a man who follows his heart and that heart says hero. Right now, he doesn't even care anymore. He has held these tears in a long time. He has been brave and calm and stong and everything that Greg Lestrade used to be. And right now he has had enough.

He stands on the street, just outside the circle of light, and he holds onto the lamp post, crying and falling and falling and falling and falling.


	6. Entropy

Dimmock just _stands_ there as Greg crumbles in front of him. Everything around them seems to be falling apart, decaying, slowly entropying into utter ruin. He can't see it because it's dark and the bulbs in the cheap streetlights here are starting to fizzle out, but he knows it's going on. He imagines rubble descending around them like pebbles sinking into molasses, disintegrating as it sinks to the ground, piling up and up and _up_ until they're surrounded by a wall that separates them from_what used to be_.

Iain looks up as if expecting to see a circle of light, a ray of hope shining down on them, but the only thing above them is darkness. There's Hope and Good and Real Life out there _somewhere,_ but he knows neither Greg nor himself will find that place soon.

He turns his gaze toward Lestrade again, and Iain realizes for the first time just how utterly _tired_ he is. Without Sherlock, Greg is lifeless. All his greatness seems to have vanished. Dimmock watches him, tears still falling, and cannot take it anymore.

Closing his eyes, Dimmock gathers what little emotional strength he has left and walks over to Lestrade knowing full well how much of an idiot he'll look in a few moments, but he reminds himself that he and Greg are practically in another world right now and that people's opinions don't matter. The older man says nothing as Iain wraps his arms around Greg and pulls him into a hug. The brunette doesn't say a word either. He simply stands there, holding his friend, his comrade, his second father tightly, as if by the effort he can keep the man from falling apart altogether.

The brunette knows that he has little to give to Lestrade. Iain Henry Dimmock has not the skills nor the health nor the bravery of his friend. But right now all of that doesn't matter. He just wants Greg to know that this is not the end. There is life beyond this... somewhere.

Lestrade stands there for a very long time, not moving, not speaking, not even looking at Dimmock. Then, ever so slowly, he pulls away. As he walks away into the darkness, he gives a short nod to Iain. It is one of thanks and goodbye.

Greg is not better.

One hug cannot fix his entire world.

But at least he feels like he is no longer falling. Yes, he is hanging by a string, but it is better than nothing. That's all anyone can ask for right now.


End file.
